


Their First Girl

by DarlaBlack



Series: Scenario: 5 Things [7]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Birth, Emily Lives, F/M, Family Feels, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 05:58:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17781893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarlaBlack/pseuds/DarlaBlack
Summary: In a better universe than this one, Emily lives. Mulder and Scully are preparing for their third child, but their first needs some reassurance.





	Their First Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading. This began as a tumblr prompt: "For the 5 headcanon AUs - Emily is there with Scully & Mulder (delivery room? home? whatever) when Scully gives birth to Miracle Baby #3."

**1.**

They have made this thing work, this family thing. They are even good at it, most of the time, but Scully is so tired these days. Emily, twelve and turning more beautiful by the day, helps them all by getting William ready in the mornings. She wears raspberry lip smackers and purple eyeshadow that Scully only smiles at as she packs their lunches. At the kitchen table, William rocks in his seat until Em lets him pour his own milk. “Careful,” she says, and the little boy nods.

Mulder slides behind his partner (his wife, his first best girl) while she’s chopping up carrot sticks to kiss her neck. He palms her round belly and whispers, “How about today?”

Scully reaches back with her socked foot to wrap it around his ankle. Her deft fingers still the knife, and she leans her head to his shoulder. “Sorry,” she says. “No action yet.”

He makes a disappointed grunt and moves to pour himself some coffee. When the lunches are bagged, he grabs his briefcase and calls out. “Offspring! To the dad-mobile!” And Scully laughs (still laughs after all these years) at his stupid stupid jokes.

 

**2.**

In the evening, after dinner, Emily tiptoes into her parents’ bedroom to find her mother curled on her side and reading. Her eyes focus low, on the carpet, on her own feet, and Scully notices. “Hey,” she says. “What’s up?” She scoots back and pats the bed.

Emily sits. She fidgets, fingers in the blanket. Her blonde hair hangs down over her face. After a moment, she breathes deep, sucking in courage. “What if it’s a girl?” She asks.

Scully frowns, grasping to parse the subtext. “Then we’ll have two girls.” Matter of fact is best, she thinks. “You don’t want a sister?”

The wind outside rattles the window: an autumn storm blowing in. Emily shrugs one shoulder. “She’d be yours. And dad’s.  _Really_ yours.”

Scully’s eyes fall closed as Em’s meaning washes over her. She sits up, pulls the girl to her—all gangly arms and legs in a cutoff Foo Fighters t-shirt and Chucks. She is growing out of hugs like this, but not tonight. “Emily,  _you_  are really ours. You are completely and totally ours, mine and dad’s. The how doesn’t matter to that part of it.”

Against her shoulder, Emily sobs. “But you didn’t know me when I was born. It’s not the same.”

Scully rubs her back. “No,” she says. “It’s not. It’s different. It’s special.” Another choked sob like  _yeah right_ , and Scully can only squeeze her daughter tight. “Em, you brought us together. You made us a family.” Fingers over silky hair, knobby knees raised up onto the bedspread, resting against a rounded belly. “Without you,” she says, “dad would probably be out hunting werewolves, too afraid to even kiss me.”

Em pulls back to look at her, smiling now, but confused. “What do you mean?”

Scully shakes her head. “Without you, it might have taken us  _years_ , but you made me… made us… everything changed when we brought you home. Good change. Happy change.” She raises a palm to the girl’s cheek, red with tears. “You will always be our girl.”

 

**3.**

When she tells Mulder that night in the calm dark of their bedroom, he is shocked quiet. Rain hammers their windows while they curl facing each other in the blue gloom. “Oh God,” he says. “Poor Em.”

Scully nods, her cold toes pressed into the hair of his calves. “I want her to be there when the baby comes,” she says. “I want her to be part of it.”

“Yeah,” Mulder says. He tugs her to wrap around him while he shifts to his back—her own warm body pillow, heavy belly propped on his waist. He touches it, feels the little bumps and shakes under his fingers. “Oh, Dana,” he sighs. “We’re about to be outnumbered, aren’t we?”

She laughs and kisses the warm cotton of his shirt under her cheek.

 

**4.**

The dad-mobile is stalled the next morning by the onslaught of heavy contractions just before seven. “Mulder,” Scully says, and by the way she says it, he knows. They’re ready. They have time. He tells himself these things, but still he sits in low-level panic, waiting for Maggie to come so he can drop the kids at school.

“Mulder, I’ll be fine. You can take them.”

But he shakes his head and holds onto her hips like they are keeping him steady, grounding him here in this moment when they are still just four in the house. Scully sighs and raises her own hands to hook behind his neck. Her blue eyes shine up at him, and she gives him a resigned, affectionate smile. “You’re too good, you know that?”

He shakes his head and kisses her through another contraction, rubbing rubbing at her hips. When it passes, she says “thank you,” and rests her head on his chest. He notices Emily watching them, not with the mild disgust of the pre-teen as he expected, but with a fascinated curiosity. She blushes and turns away when she sees that he’s noticed.

When Maggie comes, he takes only William to school, leaving the three Scully women at home. “Be back soon,” he says. He sees that Emily is holding her mother’s hand and he knows they’ve made the right decision, letting her stay.

 

**5.**

They are at the hospital by four p.m., Mulder and Scully and Emily, who checks on her mother regularly and gives her sips of vitamin water. It’s Emily who comes to find Mulder in the hall when things pick up. “Dad,” she says, because he’s had to make some quick phone calls. “Dad, her water broke. She needs you.” He hangs up quickly and follows his daughter in.

Scully won’t listen to the nurses, surprising no one, as she kneels on all-fours on the bed. Mulder rubs her back while she groans through the pain and the pushing. Emily watches them both in awe. She cries, as they do, when the tiny pinking body is lifted to her mother’s arms.

“Oh, you did it,” Mulder says, pushing hair back from Scully’s face. “Oh, baby, look,” because the little face is screaming itself known from a flannel blanket with its umbilical cord still attached. He helps Scully turn, carefully, to rest on her back. They all peer down at the squirming child, who opens its eyes and shoots a fist out from the covering.

The nurses want to cut the cord, but she holds them back. “Delayed is better,” she says. “Em, come see.”

The girl does, leaning over this new tiny thing with such awe. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

Scully tugs away the blanket. “A girl,” she says and smiles at her other daughter. “Do you want to cut the cord?”

Em looks surprised, glances at Mulder. “Dad?”

“Nah, I got the last one.”

So she does it and feels so proud, feels like this is  _her_  little sister, feels the whole weight and duration and strength of her family. She tells Maggie and William everything when they come to see.

“Another girl?” William asks, trying not to seem disappointed. But he is fascinated by the tiny hands and feet.

When the baby sleeps and Dana sleeps and Maggie is readying to take the kids home, Mulder pulls Emily aside. He squeezes her shoulder, then hugs her. “You’re my first baby,” he says. “And I love you so much.”

She nods. She tries not to cry. “Thanks, daddy.”


End file.
